Sunday, November 12, 2006

Julian Sanchez Exorcises My Conservative Soul   [Jonah Goldberg]

Julian Sanchez — a very sharp, true believing libertarian — has some interesting comments re my latest piece in the magazine (a review of Sullivan's Conservative Soul which will be posted tomorrow I believe). He writes, in part:

As for the main argument of the book, Goldberg has two main beefs. The first is that "evil is rarely defeated by people who are unsure they are right," which Goldberg takes to mean that a "conservatism of doubt" will be too anemic to combat the enemies of liberal modernity: He mocks the idea of a "serious political movement" founded on the slogan "We're not sure!" But I think this misapprehends one paradoxical aspect of the relationship between doubt and confidence. I know, for example, that science proceeds haltingly, that its conclusions are always open to revision, and indeed, that many of the scientific beliefs of the past have been either rejected or developed to accommodate new facts. And this is precisely why I can be so confident in the scientific enterprise in the aggregate: Because I know there are scores of intelligent and skeptical researchers constantly testing and refining its conclusions. I can be fanatical in my defense of liberal societies, not because (like Islamists) I'm sure they have discovered the One Best Way of Life, but because they embody a process that allows fallible people to seek continual improvement.

Second, Jonah takes issue with Andrew's "divinization of conscience," which he casts as an arrogant rejection of tradition. And this brings us back to what I regard as the misreading of Hayek that keeps Jonah in the conservative camp—a point that Nick Gillespie tried to make when they debated a few months back, but I don't think Jonah fully grokked. First, to say we should "rely on tradition" doesn't actually relieve us of the responsibility for making our own moral judgments, for much the same reason the argument that the argument that we need religious texts as a guide to morality doesn't go through. There are multiple traditions to choose from, and multiple strains within each tradition, so an apparent "deference to tradition" always still involves the exercise of one's own judgment. (In the same way that you may outsource your health decisions to a doctor, but you're still responsible for finding a wise doctor.) Moreover, recall that Hayek's argument is meant to show why tradition's evolved rules are likely to produce better results than a wholesale constructivist rationalism. But this argument actually depends on people making use of critical reason, which is quite different. In effect, Jonah wants to say: Look what cultural evolution has produced—great, freeze it! But evolution works because of mutation, variation, and selection, and it's still going on. A tradition that can't accommodate that kind of variation is unlikely to stay adaptive for long.

Me: I'm not sure this is quite fair to me or my views.

First, I like his analogy to science, but I'm not sure it does what he thinks it does. Yes, yes, science accepts its own fallibility (within the parameters of science itself of course; only science can disprove science according to the scientist), and that's a good thing. But Julian and the folks at Reason are certainly positive — dare I say certain — that science is better than voodoo. And, if the Federal Government sought to replace the pursuit of science with the pursuit of mumbo-jumbo and poking dolls with needles, they would certainly be certain that this is wrong. We can get into a lot tautological thinking here but it seems to me that pluralists are no less sure that their open societies are better than closed, athoritarian or totalitarian, societies. Wasn't that the lesson of Pym Fortuyn? On this, I think Julian and I agree. I'm just not sure why he thinks what he says illuminates misapprehension on my part.

Second, I do not object to change nor to adaptation and I'd be interested to know when or where I have ever said anything that comes to close to advocacy of "freezing" culture where it is. I also don't think I said in my review — or anywhere else — that critical reasoning is something we can or should abdicate wholesale to authority. I think this is a strawman libertarians often retreat to whenever they hear any arguments about deferring to tradition.

Let's take gay marriage. I'm not a passionate opponent to gay marriage — as some close readers have gleened over the years. I favor civil unions and it's my guess that gay marriage is ultimately inevitable. And yet, I still oppose it. Why? Truth be told, my primary — but not sole — objection isn't religious. Rather, it's that, unlike some relevant advocates of same-sex marriage, I am humble and skeptical about the extent of what I can know. I work from the Hayekian assumption* that there is a vast amount of social-evolutionary knowledge and utility embedded in traditional marriage that should be respected even if I cannot tell you what it is. Rationalists, Progressives, Pragmatists and some kinds of libertarians don't like these sorts of arguments because they want to hear evidence based upon only the known facts — i.e. the facts known to them —  at this given moment. This sounds reasonable, often is reasonable and I would hate to have people think I'm opposed to arguments based on evidence. But there are some things about which we can't know all the facts right now. Most social policy failures — and disasters — arise from people working on the assumption that they have all the necessary data at hand. This remains the enduring folly of Progressives who believe they have all the facts they need to redraw the face of society. Indeed, Sullivan's argument for gay marriage is a Progressive one at its core (though of a conservative bent). He wants to use the insitution of marriage to change gay people. And in truth, that's always been the most persuasive argument for gay marriage in my opinion. In short, my objection to gay marriage isn't primarily principled in the sense that my objection really has nothing to do with my attitudes toward homosexuality per se. It has to do with my views toward the pace of change itself. Gay marriage is a very, very, new idea. My view/hunch is that implementing it too quickly is a bad idea (for all sorts of obvious and unobvious reasons). More social "evolution" is required. This may be unjust to individual gays living today — I have no doubt it feels that way to them — but as Edmund Burke said conservatives "must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes." (Note: I'm quite consistent on all of this ). And, who knows? After a generation of study, comtemplation and debate we may discover that it really is a bad idea after all. Or it may just seem obvious that gays should have been married all along.

What I think folks like Julian and Nick fail to "grok" is that a strong sense of deference to tradition is not in fact anything like a desire to freeze culture where it is. Not to sound too legalistic, but we understand that old precedents deserve greater deference than newer ones because society has incorporated longstanding precedents in myriad ways. Ripping up these precedents could cause unforeseen damage. But, even the most stubborn judicial conservative understands that any precedent can and should be overturned when warranted. It's just that the threshold for some precedents is much higher than for others. This is where critical reasoning comes in (Liberals understand this basic concept when it comes to things like the environment).

Many cultural libertarians talk a great game about how individuals should have the freedom to learn from their mistakes. But they are glibly dismissive of the suggestion that societies should learn from their mistakes as well. Most of our institutions and traditions have answered questions and solved problems we don't even know how to ask or identify. I can't give you all the evidentiary and factual reasons why we shouldn't revisit the practice of witch-burning but that's hardly a good justification for a bold new age of social experimentation.

*Whether Hayek himself would have agreed is open to a lot of debate See here , here, here and here for a few examples or just google Hayek and gay marriage.

11/12 10:20 AMShare